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Brennan: Administrators fail Rutgers University

Rutgers, of all universities, should have known better. Rutgers should have known that a coach who fires basketballs at the heads of his players and assaults them at practice should not keep his job. The so-called leaders of Rutgers University should have known that if a coach is hurling homophobic and misogynistic insults at his male players, he shouldn't be allowed to represent the school for one more hour, much less four more months.

Thirteen Rutgers University faculty members are demanding the resignation of university President Robert Barchi over his response to a video showing basketball coach Mike Rice hitting, shoving and berating his players with anti-gay slurs.
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Rutgers, of all universities, should have known better. Rutgers should have known that a coach who fires basketballs at the heads of his players and assaults them at practice should not keep his job. The so-called leaders of Rutgers University should have known that if a coach is hurling homophobic and misogynistic insults at his male players, he shouldn't be allowed to represent the school for one more hour, much less four more months.

Rutgers should have known better because the school already has lived through such things. Its women's basketball team was the model of grace and dignity six years ago when radio shock jock Don Imus triggered a national scandal and lost his job by calling the players "nappy-headed hos." And just 2 1/2 years ago, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge after a webcam set up by his roommate showed him kissing another man.

So how is it possible that at least one leader of this same institution of higher learning, its athletics director, saw hours of videotape of the atrocious behavior of men's basketball coach Mike Rice last fall, and not only failed to fire him, but welcomed him back to coach most of the season after a three-game suspension and a $50,000 fine in December?

Rice is gone now, finally, appropriately and very belatedly. He was fired not because it was the right thing to do, but because Rutgers grew uncomfortable and embarrassed seeing the awful videotape, obtained by ESPN, replayed over and over again across the nation. Were it not for the media attention, Rice undoubtedly would still be Rutgers' coach today. So now we don't have universities policing themselves, we have the media doing it for them.

There are two men who are responsible for allowing Rice to represent Rutgers four months too long -- two men who failed the students of Rutgers and their families, who failed the taxpayers of New Jersey, who failed that 2007 women's basketball team and who failed Clementi's memory. They are university president Robert Barchi and athletics director Tim Pernetti. Astoundingly, as of Wednesday night, they both still have their jobs. They still are employed by Rutgers and the people of New Jersey.

Barchi has not fired Pernetti, nor has Barchi been fired by the school's board of governors. Pernetti admitted that he watched every last second of the Rice videotape last fall. He saw every punch. He heard every anti-gay and anti-woman epithet. And he still wanted Rice to be his coach.

What's more, Pernetti said Barchi saw the video four months ago. Barchi said he did not. (Sounds like a great working relationship, doesn't it?)

If the university president did see it, he's as culpable as Pernetti. If he didn't, why didn't he? He wasn't curious enough to find out what was happening on his campus to young athletes he has been entrusted to watch over? His AD was suspending his coach for three games and fining him $50,000, and the president didn't want to know and see every detail? Has Rutgers learned nothing from the dreadful cover-up at Penn State, other than how to botch its own cover-up?

Pernetti's behavior is even more astounding considering his background, which should have prepared him to handle just such an event as this. He's a TV guy, working for years in programming for ABC Sports, then moving to the cable start-up CSTV and creating the first-ever 24-hour network dedicated completely to college sports. How could a man with that background not realize that all the damning footage he was looking at was going to get out?

Pernetti, 42, was given the perfect excuse to fire his coach -- first for his behavior, obviously, and also for not winning. Rice was very good at not winning. It's not as if Rice was Bob Knight, with his terrible behavior problems but three NCAA championship banners hanging in the rafters. It should have been an easy call for a young, up-and-coming AD at a school heading to the Big Ten. Instead, the Big Ten has to be shaking its head, wondering what just hit it. First Penn State, now this?

Meanwhile, back in New Jersey, some serious people have a few serious questions for Barchi and Pernetti.

"The leadership at Rutgers must explain to the people of New Jersey why Mr. Rice's firing didn't happen sooner and how such an abusive environment was ever permitted to exist at our state university," said New Jersey Assembly Higher Education Chairwoman Celeste Riley. "If the Rutgers administration refuses to explain itself, I will seek to get the answers the people of our state deserve as to why he wasn't fired sooner."

One coach gone, two officials in big trouble. Apparently just another day at the office at Rutgers University.